MS Collections

O give me faith
That I may be
Alive when April's 
Ecstasy
Dances in every
Whitethorn tree.

Here was a flame lovely - 
A blue and white
Wavering spire of love.
This candle-light
Had known the mystery of
A dream's first flight.

I am the sum of nothing - nought
The child of sterility
Yet I rise
Surely to the absolute
And the certain certainties.

A candle burning before a sacred shrine
Sculpturing shadow-saints on the transept
Grotesque and full of fearful mystery
Dark wonder of the terrible fate of Christ.

Slowly, slowly, slowly
The dream unfolded its leaves
And I saw a young girl coming towards me,
Moving like a sensuous river
Through the flat meadows of April.

To understand me you must bend
Your spirit. You must lie
Close-eared to Earth when April is
Tripping across the fields.

I heard them cheering wildly
The children and I thought
In the grey market-place of Fear
Some slave has been unbought

Or some rich man has scattered
The world's selfish grain
And Hunger nevermore need beg
The winnowings of gain

Or maybe it was Beauty had
Lit lamps for every one
And made a million poets
Where before there had been none

And the Father Son and Spirit
Had come down from Their high throne
And the knowledge of the Trinity
Was the gossip of the town.

Nothing I know
I cannot reason out
Why in my low
Whisper dreams a shout
Profounder than
The rocky fall of sound
Where the god-man
Breaks to the gate unfound

I cannot stoop
But blossoms mystic-hued
Are loop and loop
And faery-screwed
By the fingers of a queen
About my seeing
All life is green
A myriad lights with being

One talks and hums
Mid-summering the air
To void.

In some rich soil
I at last may sow
A seed created from the foil
Of striving to know
Where stands the hidden
Wisdom tree
That is bidden
Only to Poetry.

I know that I have heard
A truth so different
That I had no word
To lock it in with sense.